[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk "dual licensing"

[Kevin P. Fleming]

Brian Capouch wrote:

> I would like to see you say out loud, just once, that those of us who 
> know all of that and disclaim our work to Digium are not necessarily 
> idiotic boobs who don't know what we're doing.

As Joe already pointed out, he doesn't believe this to be the case :-)

However, this thread brings to mind a side-issue that I've been bothered 
about: I have improvements in my local Asterisk tree that I _cannot_ get 
merged into the main Asterisk tree, no matter how 
wonderful/exciting/magical they are, because they are based on code 
written by others, released under the GPL, and those authors will not 
agree to give Digium an unrestricted license to their code.

This is a big concern to me, for two reasons:

First is that it can (and will) stifle Asterisk development to some 
degree, because interested parties cannot just grab "best of breed" code 
that they find out there in the wild (licensed under the GPL) and 
incorporate it into Asterisk. This means that developers must implement 
_from scratch_ equivalent code if they want it to get into Digium's 
Asterisk tree.

Second is that even if a developer implements the code _from scratch_, 
if they have seen the original code distributed under the GPL, and their 
re-implementation ends up being very similar to the original, they 
cannot legally contribute that code under the terms of Digium's 
disclaimer, because there is some doubt as to whether they have complete 
rights over what that they are contributing. Certainly Digium is 
protected, because the disclaimer absolves them of the burden of proving 
whether any contributed code is actually being legally contributed or 
not, but the contributor exposes themselves to possible actions, and it 
could harm the Asterisk name/brand/reputation if such code was later 
found to have been improperly contributed. This issue as recently dealt 
with in the Linux kernel community, but there is less of an issue there 
because contributions are pure GPL, there is no dual licensing model 
available.

In summary, it bothers me that contributions to Digium's Asterisk tree 
must be "clean room" implementations, without reference to existing 
alternatively-licensed implementations, unless those reference 
implementations can be re-licensed under Digium's terms. Please 
understand that I too am very happy that Digium exists, has provided 
Asterisk to the community, and I'm happy to help them earn an income and 
continue supporting/extending Asterisk. What I'm concerned about is that 
Asterisk will not be able to grow as well as it could if these license 
restrictions were not in place, and since some of us (myself included) 
are basing business enterprises around Asterisk, I want to see the 
product be able to do everything it is capable of, in the best way 
possible, not only the ways that are possible via clean-room implementation.

Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer, don't play one on TV, nor have I 
discussed these issues with one. I do, however, have a very good 
understanding of the GPL and Digium's long-form disclaimer (or at last I 
think I do <G>), and I have discussed these issues with others who I 
have reason to believe also understand the relevant documents.